Page:Nature and Character of our Federal Government.djvu/21

 liabilities of every British subject; and, indeed, the most that the colonies ever contended for was an equality, in these respects, with the subjects born in England. The facts, therefore, upon which our author's reasoning is founded, spring from a different source from that from which he is compelled to derive them, in order to support his conclusion.

So far as the author's argument is concerned, the subject might be permitted to rest here. Indeed, one would be tempted to think, from the apparent carelessness and indifference with which the argument is urged, that he himself did not attach to it any particular importance. It is not his habit to dismiss grave matters with such slight examination, nor does it consist with the character of his mind to be satisfied *with reasoning which bears even a doubtful relation to his subject. Neither can it be supposed that he would be willing to rely on the simple ipse dixit of Chief Justice Jay, unsupported by argument, unsustained by any reference to historical facts, and wholly indefinite in extent and bearing. Why, then, was this passage written? As mere history, apart from its bearing on the Constitution of the United States, it is of no value in this work, and is wholly out of place. All doubts upon this subject will be removed in the progress of this examination. The great effort of the author, throughout the entire work, is to establish the doctrine, that the Constitution of the United States is a government of "the people of the United States," as contradistinguished from the people of the several States; or, in other words, that it is a consolidated, and not a federative system. His construction of every contested federal power depends mainly upon this distinction; and hence the necessity of establishing a one-ness among the people of the several colonies, prior to the revolution. It may well excite our surprise, that a proposition so necessary to the principal design of the work, should be stated with so little precision, and dismissed with so little effort to sustain it by argument. One so well informed as Judge Story, of the state of political opinions in this country, could scarcely have supposed that it would be received as an admitted truth, requiring no examination. It enters too deeply into grave questions of constitutional law, to be so summarily disposed of. We should not be content, therefore, with